As Julien had prophesied, it was only a question of time when he would
be surprised by his patroness in his true garb and estate. The event
occurred as he was stepping from his touring-car to get his golf-clubs
from the hallway of his Gramercy Park apartment at the very moment when
Bobbie Holland emerged from the house next door. Both her hands flew
involuntarily to her cheeks, as she took in and wholly misinterpreted
his costume, which is not to be wondered at when one considers the
similarity of a golfing outfit to a chauffeur's livery.
"Oh!" she cried out, as if something had hurt her.
Julien, for once startled out of his accustomed poise, uncovered and
looked at her apprehensively.
Her voice quivered a little as she asked, very low, "Do you _have_ to do
that?"
"Why--er--no," began the puzzled Julien, who failed for the moment to
perceive what of tragic portent inhered in a prospective afternoon of
golf. Her next words enlightened him.
"I should think you might have let me help before taking a--servant's
position."
"It's an honest occupation," he averred.
"Do you do this--regularly?" she pursued with an effort.
"Off and on. There's good money in it."
"Oh!" she mourned again. Then: "You're doing this so that you can afford
to buy paints and canvas and--and things to paint me," she accused. "It
isn't fair!"
"I'd do worse than this for that," he declared valiantly.
Less than a fortnight later she caught him doing worse. She had ceased
to speak to him of his chauffeurdom because it seemed to cause him
painful embarrassment. (It did, and should have!) There had been a big
theater party, important enough to get itself detailed in the valuable
columns which the papers devote to such matters, and afterward supper at
the most expensive uptown restaurant, Miss Roberta Holland being one of
the listed guests. As she took her place at the table, she caught a
glimpse of an unmistakable figure disappearing through the waiter's
exit. And Julien Tenney, who had risen from his little supper party of
four (stag) hastily but just too late, on catching sight of her, saw
that he was recognized. Flight, instant and permanent, had been his
original intent. Now it would not do. Bolder measures must be devised.
He appealed to the head-waiter to help him carry out a joke, and that
functionary, developing a sense of humor under the stimulus of a
twenty-dollar bill, procured him on the spot an ill-fitting coat and a
black string tie, and gave him certain simple directions. When the
patroness of Art next observed the object of her patronage, he was
performing the humble but useful duties of an omnibus.
Miss Holland suddenly lost a perfectly good and hitherto reliable
appetite.
Nor was she the only member of the supper party to develop symptoms of
shock. The gilded and stalwart youth on her left, following her glance,
stared at the amateur servitor with protruding eyes, ceased to eat or
drink, and fell into a state of semi-coma, muttering at intervals an
expressive monosyllable.
"Why not swear out loud, Caspar?" asked Bobbie presently. "It'll do you
less harm."
"D'you see that chap over yonder? The big, fine-looking one fixing the
forks?"
"Yes," said Bobbie faintly.
"Well, that's--No, by thunder, it can't be!--Yes, by the red-hot hinges,
it _is!_"
"Do you think you know him?"
"Know him! I _know_ him? He bunked in with me for two weeks at Grandpré.
He was captain of a machine-gun outfit sent down to help us clean out
that little wasp's nest. His name's Tenney, and if ever there was a
hellion in a fight! And see--what he's come to! My God!"
"Well, don't cry about it," advised the girl, serenely, though it was
hard for her to keep her voice steady. "There's nothing to do about it,
is there?"
"Isn't there!" retorted the youth, rising purposefully. "I'm going to
get him and find him a job that's fit for him if I have to take him into
partnership. Of all the dash-blanked-dod-blizzened--"
"Caspar! What are you going to do? Don't. You'll embarrass him
frightfully."
But he was already heading off his prey at the exit. Bobbie saw her
painter's face flame into welcome, then stiffen into dismay. The pair
vanished beyond the watcher's ken. On his return the gilded youth
behaved strangely. From time to time he shook his head. From time to
time he chuckled. And, while Bobbie was talking to her other neighbor,
he shot curious and amused glances at her. He told her nothing. But his
interest in his supper returned. Bobbie's didn't.
To discuss the social aspects of menial service with a practitioner of
it who has been admitted to a certain implicit equality is a difficult
and delicate matter for a girl brought up in Roberta Holland's school.
Several times after the restaurant encounter she essayed it; trying both
the indirect approach and the method of extreme frankness. Neither
answered. Julien responded to her advances by alternate moods of extreme
gloom and slyly inexplicable amusement. Bobbie gave it up, concluding
that he was in a very queer mood, anyway. She was right. He was.
The next episode of their progress took the form of a veritable
unmasking which, perversely enough, only fixed the mask tighter upon
Julien Tenney. By way of loosening up his wrist for the open season,
Peter Quick Banta had taken advantage of an amiable day to sketch out a
composite floral and faunal scheme on the flagging in front of
Thornsen's Élite Restaurant, when Miss Holland, in passing, paused to
observe and wonder. At the same moment, Julien hurrying around the
corner, all but ran her down. She nodded toward the decorator of
sidewalks.
"Isn't he the funny man that you were with the first time I saw you?"
"The very same," responded Julien with twinkling eyes.
"What is he doing?"
"He's one of the few remaining examples of the sidewalk or public-view
school of art."
"Yes, but what does he do it for?"
"His living."
"Do people give him money for it? Do you think I might give him
something?" she asked, looking uncertainly at the artist, who, on hands
and knees and with tongue protruding, was putting a green head on a red
bird, too absorbed even to notice the onlookers.
"I think he'd be tickled pink."
She took a quarter from her purse, hesitated, then slipped it into her
companion's hand.
"_You_ give it to him. I think he'd like it better."
"Oh, no; I don't think he'd like it at all. In fact, I doubt if he'd
take it from me."
"Why not?"
"Well, you see," explained Julien blandly, "we're rather intimately
connected." He raised his voice. "Hello, Dad!"
The decorator furled his tongue, lifted his head, changed his crayon,
replied, "Hello, Lad," and continued his work. "What d' you think of
_that_?" he added, after a moment, triumphantly pointing a yellow crayon
at the green-headed red-bird.
"Some parrot!" enthused Julien.
"'T ain't a parrot. It's a nightingale," retorted the artist
indignantly. "You black-and-white fellows never do understand color."
"It's a corker, anyway," said Julien. "Dad here's a--an art patron who
wants to contribute to the cause."
The girl, whose face had become flushed and almost frightened, held out
her quarter.
"I--I--don't know," she began. "I was interested in your picture and I
thought--Mr. Tenney said--"
Peter Quick Banta took the coin with perfect dignity. "Thank you," said
he. "There ain't much appreciation of art just at this season. But if
you'll come down to Coney about June, I'll show you some sand-modeling
that _is_ sand-modeling--'s much as five dollars a day I've taken
in there."
Miss Holland recovered her social poise.
"I'd like to very much," she said cheerfully.
She and Julien walked on in silence. Suddenly he laughed, a little
jarringly. "Well," he said, "does that help you to place me?"
"I'm not trying to place you," she answered.
"Is that quite true?" he mocked.
"No; it isn't. It's a downright lie," said Bobbie finding courage to
raise her eyes to his.
"And now, I suppose, I shall be 'my good man' or something like that, to
you."
"Do you think it likely?"
"You called MacLachan that, you know," he reminded her.
"Long ago. When I was--when I didn't understand Our Square."
"And now, of course, our every feeling and thought is an open book to
your penetrating vision."
Her lip quivered. "I don't know why you should want to be so hateful to
me."
For a flashing second his eyes answered that appeal with a look that
thrilled and daunted her. "To keep from being something else that I've
no right to be," he muttered.
"How many more sittings do you think it will take to finish the
picture?" she asked, striving to get on safer ground.
"Only one or two, I suppose," he answered morosely.
Such was Julien's condition of mind after the last sitting that he
actually left the precious portrait unguarded by neglecting to lock the
door of the studio on going out, and the Bonnie Lassie and I, happening
in, beheld it in its fulfillment. A slow flush burned its way upward in
the Bonnie Lassie's face as she studied it.
"He's done it!" she exclaimed. "Flower and flame! Why did I ever take to
sculpture? One can't get that in the metal."
"He's done it," I echoed.
"Of course, technically, it's rather a sloppy picture."
"It's a glorious picture!" I cried.
"Naturally that," returned the exasperating critic. "It always will
be--when you paint with your heart's blood."
"Do you think your friend Bobbie appreciates the medium in which she's
presented?"
"If she doesn't--which she probably does," said the Bonnie Lassie, "she
will find out something to her advantage when she sees me to-morrow. I'm
going home to 'phone her."
In answer to the summons, Bobbie came. She looked, I thought, as I saw
her from my bench, troubled and perplexed and softened, and glowingly
lovely. At the door of the Bonnie Lassie's house she was met with the
challenge direct.
"What have you been doing to my artistic ward?"
"Nothing," replied Bobbie with unwonted meekness, and to prove it
related the incidents of the touring-car, the supper at the Taverne
Splendide, and the encounter with the paternal colorist.
"That isn't Julien's father," said the sculptress. "He's only an
adoptive father. But Julien adores him, as he ought to. The real father,
so I've heard, was a French gentleman--"
"I don't care who his father was!" cried Bobbie. (The Bonnie Lassie's
face took on the expression of an exclamation point.) "I can't bear to
think of his having to do servant's work. And I told him so yesterday."
"Did you look like that while you were telling him?"
"Like what? I suppose so."
"And what did he do?"
"Do? He didn't do anything."
"Then," pronounced the Bonnie Lassie, "he's a stick of
wood--hardwood--with a knot-hole for a heart."
"He isn't! Well, perhaps he is. He was very horrid at the last."
"About what?"
"About taking money."
"I'm a prophetess! And you're a patroness. Born in us, I suppose. You
_did_ try to give him money."
"Just to loan it. Enough so that he could go away to study and paint. He
wouldn't even let me do that; so I--I--I offered to buy the picture of
me, and he said--he said--Cecily, do you think he's sometimes a little
queer in his head?"
"Not in the head, necessarily. _What_ did he say?"
"He said he'd bought it himself at the highest price ever paid. And he
said it so obstinately that I saw it was no use, so I just told him that
I hoped I'd see him when I came back--"
"Back from where? Are you going away?"
"Yes; didn't I tell you? On a three months' cruise."
"Had you told him that?"
"Of course. That's when I tried to get him to take the money. Cecily--"
The girl's voice shook a little. "You'll tell him, won't you, that he
_must_ keep on painting?"
"Why? Doesn't he intend to?"
"He said he'd painted himself out and he didn't think he'd ever _look_
at color again."
"He will," said the Bonnie Lassie wisely and comfortably. "Grief is just
as driving a taskmaster as lo--as other emotions."
"Grief!" The girl's color ebbed. "Cecily! You don't think I've hurt
him?"
The Bonnie Lassie caught her in a sudden hug.
"Bobbie, do you know what I'd do in your place?"
"No. What?"
"I'd go right--straight--back to Julien Tenney's studio." She paused
impressively.
"Yes?" said the other faintly.
"And I'd walk right--straight--up to Julien Tenney--" Another pause,
even more impressive.
"I d-d-don't think I'd--he'd--"
"And I'd say to him: 'Julien, will you marry me?' Like that."
"Oh!" said Bobbie in outraged amazement.
"And maybe--" continued the Bonnie Lassie judicially: "maybe I'd kiss
him. Yes. I think I would."
Suddenly all the bright softness of Bobbie's large eyes dissolved in
tears. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she sobbed.
"You won't be ashamed of _yourself_," prophesied the other, "if you do
just as I say, quickly and naturally."
"Oh, naturally," retorted the girl in an indignant whimper. "I suppose
you think that's natural. Anyway, he probably doesn't care about me at
all that way."
"Roberta," said the sculptress sternly, "did you _see_ his portrait of
you?"
"Y-y-yes."
"And you have the presumption to say that he doesn't care? Why, that
picture doesn't simply tell his secret. It _yells_ it!"
"I don't care," said the hard-pressed Bobbie. "It hasn't yelled it to
me. _Nobody's_ yelled it to me. And I c-c-can't ask a m-m-man to--to--"
"Perhaps you can't," allowed her adviser magnanimously. "On second
thought, it won't be necessary. You just go back--after powdering your
nose a little--and say that you've come to see the picture once more, or
that it's a fine day, or that competition is the life of trade, or
that--oh, anything! And, if he doesn't do the rest, I'll kill and
eat him."
"But, Cecily--"
"You _would_ be a patroness of Art. Now I've given you something real to
patronize. Don't you dare fail me." Suddenly the speaker gave herself
over to an access of mirth. "Heaven help that young man when he comes
to own up."
"Own up to what?"
"Never mind."
Having consumed a vain and repetitious half-hour in variations upon her
query, Bobbie gave it up and decided to find out for herself. It was
curiosity and curiosity alone (so she assured herself) that impelled her
to return for the last time (she assured herself of that, also) to
the attic.
A voice raised in vehement protest, echoing through the open door of the
studio, checked her on the landing below as she mounted.
"And you're actually going to let thirty-five thousand a year slip
through your fingers, just to pursue a fad?"
To which Julien's equable accents replied:
"That's it, Merrill. I'm going to paint."
The unseen Merrill left a blessing (of a sort) behind, slammed the door
upon it, and materialized to the vision of the girl on the landing as an
energetic and spruce-looking man of forty-odd, with a harassed
expression. At need, Miss Holland could summon considerable decisiveness
to her aid.
"Would you think me inexcusably rude," she said softly, "if I asked who
you are?"
The descending man snatched off his hat, stared, seemed on the point of
whistling, then, recovering himself, said courteously: "I'm George
Merrill, advertising manager for the Criterion Clothing Company."
"And Mr. Tenney has been doing drawings for you?"
"He has. For several years."
"So that," said the girl, half to herself, "is his pot-boiling."
"Not a very complimentary term," commented Mr. Merrill, "for the best
black-and-white work being done in New York to-day. Between my concern
and two others he makes a railroad president's income out of it."
"Yes, I overheard what you said to him. Thank you so much."
"In return, may I ask you something?"
"Certainly."
"Will you not, for his own good, dissuade Mr. Tenney from throwing away
his career?"
"Why should you suppose me to have any influence with Mr. Tenney?"
Mr. Merrill's face was grave, as befitted the issue, but a twinkle
appeared at the corner of his glasses. "I've seen the portrait," he
replied, and with a bow, went on his way.
Julien opened the door to her knock. She stepped inside, facing him with
bright, inscrutable eyes.
"Why have you been fooling me about your circumstances?" she demanded.
"D---n Merrill!" said Julien with fervor.
"It's true that your 'pot-boiling' brings you a big income?"
"Yes."
"Then why do you take employment as a chauffeur?"
"I don't. That car belongs to me."
"And your being a waiter? I don't suppose the Taverne Splendide belongs
to you?"
"An impromptu bit of acting," confessed the abashed Julien.
"And this attic? Was that hired for the same comedy?"
"No. This is mine, really."
"I don't understand. Why have you done it all?"
"If you want to know the truth," he said defiantly, "so that I could
keep on seeing you."
"That's a very poor excuse," she retorted.
"The best in the world. As a successful commercial artist, what possible
interest would you have taken in me? You took me for a struggling young
painter--that was the Bonnie Lassie's fault, for I never lied to you
about it--and after we'd started on that track I didn't--well, I didn't
have the courage to risk losing you by quitting the masquerade."
"How you must have laughed at me all the time!"
He flushed to his angry eyes. "Do you think that is fair?" he retorted.
"Or kind? Or true?"
"I--I don't know," she faltered. "You let me offer you money. And you've
probably got as much as I have."
"I won't have from now on, then. I'm going to paint. I thought, when you
told me you were going away, that I couldn't look at a canvas again. But
now I know I was wrong. I've got to paint. You'll have left me that,
at least."
"Mr. Merrill thinks you're ruining your career. And if you do, it'll be
my fault. I'll never, never, never," said the patroness of Art
desolately, "try to do any one good again!"
She turned toward the door.
"At least," said Julien in a voice which threatened to get out of
control, "you'll know that it wasn't all masquerade. You'll know why
I'll always keep the picture, even if I never paint another."
She stole a look at him over her shoulder and, with a thrill, saw the
passion in his eyes and the pride that withheld him from speaking.
"Suppose," she said, "I asked you to give it up."
"You wouldn't," he retorted quickly.
"No, I wouldn't. But--but--" Her glance, wandering away from him, fell
on the joyous line of Béranger bold above the door.
"'How good is life in an attic at twenty,'" she murmured. Then, turning
to him, she held out her hands.
"I could find it good," she said with a soft little falter in her voice,
"even at twenty-two."
Everything passes in review before my bench, sooner or later. The two,
going by with transfigured faces, stopped.
"Let's tell Dominie," said Julien.
I waved a jaunty hand. "I know already," said I, "even if it hadn't been
announced to a waiting world."
"Wh-wh-why," stammered Bobbie with a blush worth a man's waiting a
lifetime to see, "it--it only just happened."
"Bless your dear, innocent hearts, both of you! It's been happening for
weeks. Come with me."
I lead them to the sidewalk fronting Thornsen's Élite Restaurant. There
stood Peter Quick Banta, admiring his latest masterpiece of imaginative
symbolism. It represented a love-bird of eagle size holding in its
powerful beak a scroll with a wreath of forget-me-nots on one end and of
orange-blossoms on the other, encircling respectively the initials.
"J.T." and "R.H." Below, in no less than four colors, ran the legend,
"Cupid's Token."
"O Lord! Dad!" cried the horrified Julien, scuffing it out with frantic
feet. "How long has this been there?"
"What're you doing? Leave it be!" cried the anguished artist. "It's been
there since noon."
"Never mind," put in Bobbie softly; "it's very pretty and tasteful even
though it is a little precipitate. But how"--she turned the lovely and
puzzled inquiry of her eyes upon the symbolist--"how did you know?"
"Artistic intuition," said Peter Quick Banta with profound complacency.
"_I'm_ an artist."